Provided by: devscripts_2.25.15_all 
NAME
dget - Download Debian source and binary packages
SYNOPSIS
dget [options] URL ...
dget [options] [--all] package[=version] ...
DESCRIPTION
dget downloads Debian packages. In the first form, dget fetches the requested URLs. If this is a .dsc
or .changes file, then dget acts as a source-package aware form of wget: it also fetches any files
referenced in the .dsc/.changes file. The downloaded source is then checked with dscverify and, if
successful, unpacked by dpkg-source.
In the second form, dget downloads a binary package (i.e., a .deb file) from the Debian mirror configured
in /etc/apt/sources.list(.d). If a version number is specified, this version of the package is
requested. With --all, the list of all binaries for the source package package is extracted from the
output of "apt-cache showsrc package".
In both cases dget is capable of getting several packages and/or URLs at once.
(Note that .udeb packages used by debian-installer are located in separate packages files from .deb
packages. In order to use .udebs with dget, you will need to have configured apt to use a packages file
for component/debian-installer).
Before downloading files listed in .dsc and .changes files, and before downloading binary packages, dget
checks to see whether any of these files already exist. If they do, then their md5sums are compared to
avoid downloading them again unnecessarily. dget also looks for matching files in
/var/cache/apt/archives and directories given by the --path option or specified in the configuration
files (see below). Finally, if downloading (.orig).tar.gz or .diff.gz files fails, dget consults apt-get
source --print-uris. Download backends used are curl and wget, looked for in that order.
dget package should be implemented in apt-get install -d.
dget was written to make it easier to retrieve source packages from the web to sponsor uploads, and thus
the primary use case is downloading binary and source packages from a URL. For fetching packages from
apt repositories it is easier to simply run apt-get download package and apt-get source package with
optional --download-only to not uncompress it with dpkg-source automatically, or package=1.22-1 to define
an exact version instead of just the latest version.
OPTIONS
-a, --all
Interpret package as a source package name, and download all binaries as found in the output of "apt-
cache showsrc package". If package is arch-qualified, then only binary packages which are "Arch:
all", "Arch: any", or "Arch: $arch" will be downloaded.
-b, --backup
Move files that would be overwritten to ./backup.
-q, --quiet
Suppress wget/curl non-error output.
-d, --download-only
Do not run dpkg-source -x on the downloaded source package. This can only be used with the first
method of calling dget.
-x, --extract
Run dpkg-source -x on the downloaded source package to unpack it. This option is the default and can
only be used with the first method of calling dget.
-u, --allow-unauthenticated
Do not attempt to verify the integrity of downloaded source packages using dscverify.
--build
Run dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc on the downloaded source package.
--path DIR[:DIR ...]
In addition to /var/cache/apt/archives, dget uses the colon-separated list given as argument to
--path to find files with a matching md5sum. For example: "--path
/srv/pbuilder/result:/home/cb/UploadQueue". If DIR is empty (i.e., "--path ''" is specified), then
any previously listed directories or directories specified in the configuration files will be
ignored. This option may be specified multiple times, and all of the directories listed will be
searched; hence, the above example could have been written as: "--path /srv/pbuilder/result --path
/home/cb/UploadQueue".
-k, --insecure
Allow SSL connections to untrusted hosts.
--no-cache
Bypass server-side HTTP caches by sending a Pragma: no-cache header.
-h, --help
Show a help message.
-V, --version
Show version information.
CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
The two configuration files /etc/devscripts.conf and ~/.devscripts are sourced by a shell in that order
to set configuration variables. Command line options can be used to override configuration file
settings. Environment variable settings are ignored for this purpose. The currently recognised variable
is:
DGET_PATH
This can be set to a colon-separated list of directories in which to search for files in addition to
the default /var/cache/apt/archives. It has the same effect as the --path command line option. It
is not set by default.
DGET_UNPACK
Set to 'no' to disable extracting downloaded source packages. Default is 'yes'.
DGET_VERIFY
Set to 'no' to disable checking signatures of downloaded source packages. Default is 'yes'.
EXAMPLES
Download all binary .deb files for current and previous version of a package, and compare them byte-for-
byte with diffoscope:
mkdir previous latest
(cd latest && dget --all mypackage=1.2-1)
(cd previous && dget --all mypackage) # download latest 1.2-2 in this example
diffoscope --html=diffoscope.html previous/ latest/
Download the source package of the current version in apt repository and the to-be-reviewed new version
at mentors.debian.net, and compare them with debdiff:
dget https://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/m/mypackage/mypackage_1.2-3.dsc
apt-get source mypackage=1.2-2
debdiff --from mypackage_1.2-2.dsc --to mypackage_1.2-3.dsc
BUGS AND COMPATIBILITY
dget --all srcpkg should be implemented in apt-get download srcpkg so apt-get could download all binary
packages based on source package name.
Before devscripts version 2.10.17, the default was not to extract the downloaded source. Set
DGET_UNPACK=no to revert to the old behaviour.
AUTHOR
This program is Copyright (C) 2005-2013 by Christoph Berg <myon@debian.org>. Modifications are Copyright
(C) 2005-06 by Julian Gilbey <jdg@debian.org>.
This program is licensed under the terms of the GPL, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
any later version.
SEE ALSO
apt-get(1), curl(1), debcheckout(1), debdiff(1), dpkg-source(1), wget(1)
Debian Utilities 2025-06-16 DGET(1)